International Security Journal Highlights

Vol. 44 No. 3, Winter 2019-20

Counterterrorism and Preventive Repression: China’s Changing Strategy in Xinjiang

Sheena Chestnut Greitens, Myunghee Lee, and Emir Yazici

The Chinese Communist Party changed its internal security strategy in Xinjiang in early 2017 because of Beijing ’s changing perception of Uyghur involvement in transnational Islamic militancy abroad, which heightened perceived domestic vulnerability to terrorism.

Conceal or Reveal? Managing Clandestine Military Capabilities in Peacetime Competition

Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Austin Long

States are more likely to reveal secret military capabilities during peacetime competition when the effects of the asset in question can be substituted with another military advantage and when the adversary is not equipped with countermeasures.

Deterring Wartime Atrocities: Hard Lessons from the Yugoslav Tribunal

Jacqueline R. McAllister

International criminal tribunals are more likely to deter violence against civilians when they have prosecutorial support and when combatant groups are both centralized and supported by liberal constituencies. 

Who Killed Détente? The Superpowers and the Cold War in the Middle East, 1969–77

Galen Jackson

In the Middle East, the demise of détente in the 1970s between the United States and Soviet Union can be attributed to U.S. actions, contrary to the conventional wisdom that the Soviet Union was responsible.

Presidents, Politics, and Military Strategy: Electoral Constraints during the Iraq War

Andrew Payne

Presidents will alter the timing and nature of military strategy in light of electoral constraints, delaying or weakening controversial courses of action.

The journal International Security  is edited at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center and published quarterly by the MIT Press.